


wonder upon wonder

by beanierose



Series: and they were soulmates [2]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, and also some OCs sorry sorry, assorted queens make appearances, it's a soft christmas time for our girls what can i say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:55:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose
Summary: a little peek into theforever is composed of nowsuniverse at christmastime, a couple years down the line from where we left them
Relationships: Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Series: and they were soulmates [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579561
Comments: 26
Kudos: 101





	wonder upon wonder

**Author's Note:**

> there's a playlist i listened to while i wrote this story, which you can find [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4gasGtbvMIpu9n6UVUqJHw). many thanks as always to [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol), [mattepinkallshades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades) and [JoanneElizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanneelizabeth) for all of your support this year. i'm very grateful for your friendship and you bring true joy to my days. and [stutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutter), my love, i cherish you beyond words. thank you for holding my hand, through writing this and everything else.

Title is from Emily Dickinson’s _before the ice is in the pools_.

* * *

“Honey, will you just come sit down for a minute?”

Trixie’s head turns towards Katya but her eyes stay fixed on the tree and the ornaments she’s adjusting for the ninetieth time.

The pink one from the old apartment is in the office, decorated with all the bizarre ornaments they don’t want to have on show in the living room. Opening the box every year is like getting reacquainted with a cornucopia of nightmare material. The tree is sporting the same tiny plastic babies and the eyeballs and the hands that Katya put on it that first Christmas, when they still lived with Kim. Trixie likes to hang her childhood McDonald’s Barbies on it too, and some ornaments she’s gotten as gifts from fans that are tiny visages of her.

In the living room though, Trixie wanted things to be more classic. They got a real tree, picked it out together and hefted it home tied to the roof of the Jeep. Trixie hung her head out of the window like a dog the whole way to check that it was still there, and Katya had to hold on to her whenever they went around a tight bend.

This tree is so beautiful and huge that the first few nights after they put it up they lay on the hardwood floor beneath it and looked up through the branches at all the lights and sensible, adult ornaments. Bunny got upset, kneading Trixie’s soft stomach with her front paws and yowling until they gave her a rice bone to gnaw on.

Katya even got to fuck Trixie just like that, right there on the floor, and she asked Trixie to keep her eyes open the whole time so she could see the reflection of the lights in them.

The house looks _Better Homes and Gardens_ perfect. Trixie has been very into DIY this holiday season, and Kim came over a couple weeks ago and spent an afternoon slicing and drying oranges to string together for garlands. This is their first Christmas since all of the renovations on the house were completed, and Trixie has been sticky-sweet and melty with happiness.

This morning she’s been fidgety and unable to keep still, and Katya is beginning to get overwhelmed. She just needs a moment of quiet and calm with her wife, before everybody gets here. Finally satisfied with the arrangement of the ornaments, Trixie comes over to the couch and sits down with both of her legs across Katya’s thighs. She looks so pretty today in her pink sweater dress and her white tights, and Katya runs her hand lazily up and down Trixie’s leg.

“It’s okay that you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” Trixie says immediately, defensively. Katya lifts both eyebrows and stares her down until Trixie realises and giggles at herself. “Oh. Right.”

Bunny pads over to them and lays her long, solemn head right in Trixie’s lap. Trixie lets her hand rest on the dog’s snout and she strokes up and down absentmindedly. Tonight is going to be loud and busy and they aren’t going to be able to have any time to themselves, so Katya isn’t about to waste this opportunity. She keeps her arm secure around Trixie’s waist and lifts her chin, touches her lips to the edge of her jaw.

“I just want people to like it. I’m really- I think it’s good. I’m proud of it.”

“It’s _so_ good.”

Trixie laughs and turns her head towards Katya to kiss her properly. She lets out a little sigh into Katya’s mouth and then smiles into their kiss so that they have to separate. Still, even after being married a couple of years, Katya is absolutely obsessed with Trixie. She supposes that comes from three decades of aching for her, wanting so badly to know her.

“You haven’t seen it yet babe,” Trixie says, and giggles. She’s so cute. Katya likes her so much, likes her full cheeks and her warm, gentle eyes.

“Don’t gotta see it,” Katya says. She wiggles her shoulders, squirming with pleasure. Trixie’s in her lap still, her thighs heavy and thick and the weight of her resting mostly against Katya’s chest. “I just already know.”

In about an hour, their house is going to be full with people, all here to watch Trixie’s holiday special air for the first time. It’s a big deal — she’s been drumming up anticipation on her social media for weeks — and Katya is excited to have their home be filled with people they love. Especially because they’re all going to be here to celebrate Trixie.

She likes to play hostess, and likes even more how Trixie comes alive whenever they get the opportunity. She’s so good at it, comfortable commanding the attention of a room and naturally gifted at putting people at ease. Their lives overflow with kindness in abundance; Katya is so full of love that she wants to pour it into the cupped, waiting hands of everyone she knows.

“Thank you.”

Katya bounces her knees until Trixie flops dramatically out of her lap and onto the couch cushion beside her. She’s sprawled gracelessly and Katya thinks about the first few months they lived together, when Trixie let go of the last of her primness and let Katya see the creases in her stomach and how heavy her tits are, how they spill all over when she lays on her back or her side in their bed.

“What for?”

Trixie snorts, and one lazy hand flaps in Katya’s direction. “You know what for.”

“I surely do, but I like to hear you extol my virtues.”

It makes Trixie sit up and take one of Katya’s hands in both of hers. All of the Christmas lights are on timers and they all come one at once right as Trixie opens her mouth. Katya lets out a goofy squawk of laughter, and then abruptly closes her mouth again to listen to her wife.

“Thank you for believing in me, right from the moment we met. Thank you for upending your whole life and moving across the country for me.”

Katya throws her head back and moans loud enough that the dog whines and noses at her palm, the cold wet touch making her startle. “More, baby, please.”

“You’re disgusting,” Trixie laughs. “And I love you. And I love that I get to come home to you every day. Even though it’s like being jump-scared each time I open the door.”

Katya groans low in her throat and lunges at Trixie, who screams and thrashes and pleads _don’tdon’tdon’t_ when Katya captures her earlobe between her teeth and bites down as hard as she dares. It helps, to be able to feel it herself and know exactly how hard she can push Trixie. That’s one of the best parts of being soulbound, one of the parts they take advantage of the most. It means that Trixie doesn’t generally need to ask Katya for more, but she does anyway because — she told Katya once — she thinks the sound of her own voice when she begs is _super fuckin’ hot_.

They make out a little bit, but there isn’t really time to take it anywhere, so when Trixie gentles her with tiny, soft, closed-mouth kisses, Katya lets her. Trixie has her arm around Katya’s shoulders and her hand in her hair, kneading her fingertips right at the base of her skull.

“I know that I could have built all this by myself,” she says very quietly, like trading a secret. “But I’m just so glad that I didn’t have to. Thank you for being here.”

“I really didn’t have a choice,” Katya says. They talked a lot, when they were first getting to know each other, about fate and inevitability and predestiny. About how they were wonderfully made, exactly right for each other. Now that they’re married, Katya thinks that putting in the work is more romantic. “But even if I did, I still would choose you.”

Trixie’s face breaks wide open at that, her smile enormous so that her nose crinkles and her eyes almost close. Christmastime suits her, pinks her cheeks and makes her merry and joy-filled. Her eyes reflect the lights strung up around their home in a way Katya’s just don’t, and she hasn’t stopped playing Christmas music and singing along loudly since the day after Thanksgiving.

“I think you’re beautiful,” Katya says, and Trixie lifts both eyebrows. “I believe you’re impeccably wise. I dream of you.”

Trixie swats at her and gets up from the couch like she doesn’t feel safe being any closer to Katya right now. “Oh, my god, stop. You know, you’re the first person I’ve ever been with who’s known how to read. I ain’t never even ever held no books or nothin’ afore I met you.”

She grins, pleased with herself, while Katya wheezes and draws her knees up to her chest like she’s about to cannonball. The dog has long become accustomed to their antics and she hops up onto the couch next to Katya and stretches out her long, skinny limbs, rests her head on her front paws. It helps, to stroke Bunny’s soft fur and stay right where she is while Trixie makes sure all the hors d’oeuvres are prepared and their glassware is set out neatly.

By the time the last of the guests has arrived, Katya feels like it’s been hours since she’s talked to Trixie. She knows that her wife has to network a bit, and her publicist wants her to post to her Instagram story about the viewing party and repost some of the hundreds of her fans’ parties that she’s being tagged in. It matters, and it’s how Trixie has grown such a fervent and devoted fanbase. Just the way she exists in a space is so generous and gentle. Katya can’t stop turning over her shoulder to sneak little glances at her, like she’s peering around her locker door at the prettiest girl in school.

She misses her, finds herself half checked out of her conversation with Willam and Alaska because she can’t stop looking at Trixie across the room. She can’t stop twisting her wedding band around and around her finger, a habit she picked up the last time Trixie was on tour and Katya missed her so much she felt like she was walking around without any insides for two months.

The commercial break ends and the special starts up again; a hush falls over the room as people listen to Trixie talk a little bit about her next song before she gets started playing it.

“The best thing about the holidays is the presents,” the on-screen Trixie says, and a small skitter of laughter goes around the room. “Or the food, or the bad movies. Or, for me, spending time with my family. Families can look like all kinds of different things, but they’re the people you want to cosy up with when the nights are drawing in and it’s cold outside.”

Sasha is next to Katya on the couch and she squeezes her hand, leans in to put her lips against Katya’s ear. “ _Eto idet khorosho_.”

 _It’s going well_. It is, Katya is so proud that she feels like all of her organs are inflating and could drift up out of her mouth sometime soon. On the television, Trixie says “I hope you’re cuddled up with the people you love right now. This next song’s from my family to yours.”

“Girl it’s what now?” Monét yells, at the television rather than at actual real-life Trixie.

The camera pans back to show a wide shot of the fake living room they built to shoot on. It’s a lot more festive than their actual living room is, and also a lot more pink. It’s beautiful, and in the brief moments Katya has dared look at Twitter she’s seen people talking about the Barbie Dreamhouse aesthetic of the whole thing and how perfect that is for Trixie’s brand.

“You’re not going to sing,” Sasha says to Katya, and looks so genuinely horrified that it makes Trixie scream a laugh from across the room.

Katya wheezes out a burst of pneumatic laughter and shakes her hands in the air, to hide how she’s pink with embarrassment all the way up to the tips of her ears. She can feel pride glowing warm in the middle of her chest, too. She took some convincing, Trixie really had to work to get her to do this, but she’s glad she did. It made Trixie so happy.

“Shut up, _yaytso_. Watch the show.”

On the television screen, Katya is sitting on a white couch with Bunny stretched out along the cushions next to her and her head pillowed in Katya’s lap. One of her stipulations for appearing was that she be allowed to dress herself, and she’s wearing a red dress with embroidery in gold and green, and gold fringe along the edges of the oversized collar. It was a vintage find she’d been so excited to come across in the thrift store that she’d texted Trixie a photograph from the dressing room, awkward in the small space so that her head and feet were cut off from the frame.

Her phone had immediately vibrated with a whole bunch of messages from her wife, insisting that she buy it and telling her she looked like a _perfect festive confection_. It feels goofy, almost adolescent, to still blush so ferociously when Trixie compliments her, but she can’t help it. She and Trixie were always meant to love each other, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still nice to feel like she’s earned it. Like Trixie loves her for her, and not just because they’re soulbound.

On the screen, Trixie is sitting neatly in a plush pink armchair with her guitar across her knees. Nearly all of the lights are dimmed, only the string lights left on so that it looks cosy and intimate. When they’d shot this part they’d cleared out the set so there was only a skeleton crew of the production team left watching. Trixie had wanted it to feel peaceful and quiet and still, a moment of calm close to the end of the special.

While she sings, on the screen Katya and Bunny are both watching her. It isn’t Katya’s first time seeing evidence of how she looks at Trixie, of course not, but it always hits her like it’s new. She hardly recognises herself. She looks grounded and comfortable, and her face is plump with tenderness. Trixie’s voice is beautiful, and much softer than most of her other songs. The lights on the Christmas tree next to her are bathing Katya’s face in red and blue and green light, and reflecting in the dog’s round, dark eyes. Both of them adore Trixie, that’s very clear, and every time Trixie looks up from her guitar and meets Katya’s eyes she gets this soft, shy little smile. Katya remembers feeling how amazed Trixie had been that all of it was really happening, how proud and pleased and grateful she’d been the day they shot.

The real life Trixie, the one here in the room, excuses herself from a conversation with Bob and her publicist and comes over to squeeze onto the couch next to Katya. There’s not enough room really, and Katya has to drape her arm over Trixie’s shoulders so that she can fit, kind of sideways because her hips are too wide. The whole evening is perfumed with her. Trixie, Trixie, Trixie.

“This is my favourite part of the whole thing,” Trixie says softly, just for Katya. “Thank you for agreeing to do it. You look so beautiful. I’m so proud to be loved by you.”

Longing pours through Katya, warm and liquid, and she turns her head to look at her wife properly. Trixie is especially beautiful this evening. The viewing party is a mix of their friends and Trixie’s professional acquaintances, people she had to invite to be polite. Katya suddenly, fiercely, wishes that they all would leave so she could spread Trixie out on their bed and kiss her smooth pale skin all over. It’s not even that she’s particularly more horned up than usual — it’s always like this with Trixie — she just wants to consume her. Tonight, she wishes Trixie lived inside of her chest and no one else was allowed to look at her or know her at all.

“Stop it,” Trixie tells her gently. “Everyone will go home later. Then you can have me.”

Katya takes a little piece of Trixie’s hair and starts twirling it around her fingers. She wants her so badly right now that the urge to stuff Trixie’s hair into her mouth almost wins out, but Trixie narrows her eyes at her and gives her one small, sharp shake of her head.

“I wanna have you right now,” Katya says darkly. No one’s paying them any attention, even though Trixie is the woman of the hour, and it’s buoying her. It’s making her courageous. “I wanna lay you down right here on the fucking floor and have everyone watch.”

Even if she couldn’t feel the way Trixie’s skin prickles and her insides all tug down sharply towards the space between her thighs, it would still be satisfying. Lovely colour rises up the column of her neck and into her round cheeks and the tips of her ears. Katya is mostly kidding, just saying it out of curiosity. Just to see what Trixie will do.

“ _Katya_.” Just the sound of her name in Trixie’s mouth is enough to make her press her thighs together. She always says it like it’s the most interesting thing in the world, like she likes the feel of it and wants to roll it around.

“Yes, baby?”

Trixie is limp and pliant next to her on the couch, like she gets when Katya’s made her come over and over and she’s out of her mind with it, delirious with want. But Katya feels like she hasn’t touched her for hours.

“Be nice to me. Please. I’m _working_.”

It’s only half true, but it’s enough to make Katya fold her hands together neatly and trap them between her knees. She thinks that Trixie might leave her there, admonished, but she stays right where she is. The focus is on her still, and her energy shifts and expands like an iridescent film to include people, but Katya gets to exist at the centre of it right beside her.

When the credits start rolling on the special the room explodes with applause and Trixie, thrilled, holds her clasped hands over her heart. She’s biting the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t cry, and Katya probes the sore spot in her own mouth with the tip of her tongue. A little sting of pleasure goes through her when she sees her name in the credits, right next to Bunny.

“Trixie, I need you thanking people on Twitter now hon,” her publicist comes over to them to say. Lots of celebrities would just have their people do it for them, but Trixie likes to interact with her fanbase herself, wants it to always be authentic.

While she’s doing that, while she’s busy, Katya has to be the one to play hostess. She does a quick circle of their space to make sure no one’s wanting for anything. Kim is sitting on the kitchen floor with Bunny, playing tug of war. Bob has a crowd of several people listening to her regale anecdotes from the early days of touring with Trixie. Some of Trixie’s people have already slipped away, the ones who had to be here in a professional capacity, and their home feels somehow more full now.

It seems to take forever for everyone to leave. Katya kisses Sasha’s cheek on the doorstep and thanks her for staying to help clean up a bit, accepts the hug Shea offers.

“ _Ya gorzhus’ toboy_ ,” Sasha tells her very quietly, and squeezes her hand. Shea is a down at the driveway to meet the Uber, and it gives Katya a little privacy to throw her arms around Sasha’s neck and hide her face there.

“I’m proud of you, too. Thank you. I just-” She puts enough space between them that she can see Sasha’s face, round and wise and kind. Everything wells up very suddenly and Katya clears her throat, closes her eyes for a moment. “Thank you, _yaytso_.”

Sasha is smart enough not to say anything else. She’s always been good at recognising when Katya is on the watery edge of an emotional spill, and these days it’s Trixie that Katya turns to. Trixie she leans on.

When Katya steps back inside her wife has just finished going through her Twitter mentions, and she turns her phone off completely.

Katya closes the front door with the press of Trixie’s body against it, feels the low thunk of the snib sliding home like it’s between her legs. Trixie is already reaching around behind herself and fumbling for the zipper on her dress. Katya knocks her fingers out of the way to unfasten it for her, and both Trixie’s hands come to Katya’s ass and haul her in close.

Trixie makes a small, frustrated noise and Katya nudges her leg between Trixie’s to give her something to grind her hips against. Trixie’s still wearing her shoes and Katya took hers off hours ago, so she had to lift onto tiptoe to get her mouth against Trixie’s.

They’re not even kissing, not really. Katya is panting raggedly against Trixie’s cheek. It feels like she’s been right on the edge for hours and hours, like she could come just from the slightest brush of Trixie’s knuckles, even through her underwear. Seeing Trixie so comfortable and proud of herself this evening has made Katya want her so badly that she could cry.

“Take me to bed,” Trixie says. Her dress is unzipped and hanging from her elbows, impeded by how she’s grabbing at Katya so it can’t come all the way off. She’s feeling a little smug about it, about how Trixie’s hips are rocking down hard against her thigh and her eyes keep closing.

Their bedroom is on the other side of the house. Katya is giddy at finally getting to have her, and she feels possessive and impatient. The thought of taking her hands off of Trixie, even just to lay her down, seems impossible.

“No, here. I want you right here.”

“If I get a splinter in my ass I’ll fuckin’ kill you,” Trixie says, but she’s laughing.

Katya shuts her up with the hot slick of her tongue into Trixie’s mouth, and brings them both down to the floor as carefully as she can manage. The dog is shut away in the kitchen and she yowls to be let out, but Katya can’t seem to lift her head from the slick, hot juncture of Trixie’s thighs.

“You’re my wife,” she tells her, and Trixie says _yes, yes, I’m yours_.

* * *

“Do you think I should take these down?” Katya asks.

Trixie’s caught her standing with her hands on her hips while she studies the art in the living room, and she slinks up behind her and tucks her hands into Katya’s front pockets to pin their bodies together. “Why would you do that?”

“It doesn’t seem very-” Katya wrinkles her nose and casts one hand uselessly around in the air, searching for the right word. “On brand? For you. Maybe we should hide them.”

“Don’t you dare. They’re perfect.”

Trixie’s got her chin resting on top of Katya’s shoulder so that she can feel her jaw working as she talks, and she can smell her perfume and her shampoo. She doesn’t get butterflies when she sees Trixie anymore. Instead she just feels safe, and certain, and she likes that much better.

“I just don’t want you to be embarrassed. I feel like I’m the madwoman in your attic.”

Trixie snorts and knocks her temple against Katya’s. “I know the theatre of it would be pretty spectacular but please don’t burn the house down.”

“You wouldn’t risk going blind to rescue me?” Katya keeps her voice all light and sweetness, and turns her head to bat her eyes at Trixie as best she can.

“I risk going blind every time you smile at me. Those perfect fuckin’ cartoon teeth?” Katya snaps them at her, and Trixie shivers. “And anyway, I prefer my lesbianism to be more explicit. It can be read that Jane’s a lesbian, because-”

“Because Charlotte was too. Uh-huh, yes, I know, baby.”

Trixie makes a small noise, affronted at having been cut off before she can launch into her dissertation about the implicit homoeroticism in the Brontë canon. It’s Katya’s own fault, she’s the one who read Trixie the op-ed over the breakfast table, and it had become her favourite topic of conversation for weeks afterwards.

“ _Anyway_.” Trixie touches her lips to the skin right behind Katya’s ear, where her pulse is hot and alive and jumps into that small kiss. “I like our lesbian artwork. I like our home. And my fanbase is mostly LGBT anyway. No one’s going to care that my wife painted an _intimate portrait_ of me and hung it in the living room.”

“Okay. Yeah, fine. Good. I just don’t want you to like, feel bad or whatever. If you wanted to hide the bodies. Or like, zhush the place up or whatever. It’s your video, honey.”

A few weeks after Christmas, the people from _Architectural Digest_ are coming to shoot a video for their Open Door series. It was Trixie’s idea, and she’d had her publicist reach out to them and set it up. All of the renovations are finally finished and the house feels like it’s theirs. Trixie loves to show it off, loves to have people over and play hostess, and Katya knows she’s so excited for the whole world to get to see what they’ve built together. Mostly because she can feel it vibrating at a low frequency in Trixie’s chest like she’s purring whenever they talk about it.

“I don’t want to change anything about our home, Katya.” Trixie’s voice is firm, and Katya understands that there’s no more wiggle room, no more space to disagree. And then she softens and kisses Katya’s ear and her cheek and the corner of her eye like she’s trying extra hard to be sweet and good. “But I did want to ask you about something.”

“What’s that?”

Anxiety is making Trixie’s hands sweat, and Katya’s own palms are itchy with it. She tries her best to stay relaxed. Trixie is the thing in her life that she’s the most certain of, and it doesn’t help either of them when Katya lets her head balloon with worst case scenarios before Trixie can even get out a sentence.

“I talked to everybody.” That means her publicist, and Bob, who is now officially her manager. “And the AD people, and everyone thinks it might be a good idea to have you here for the shoot. As well.” Trixie is gnawing on the corner of her lip, and she lifts her eyes to Katya. “To have you be in the video.”

“Oh god, absolutely not.” She doesn’t mean it to come out quite so horrified.

Trixie drops her arms from around Katya and they hang limply at her sides as she takes a few small, skittish steps away from her. Katya doesn’t dare lift her chin and look her in the face. She can feel Trixie getting upset already and trying very hard not to let it spill over.

There’s a tiny noise, a little squeak like rubber against wood. “I also thought it was a good idea. I would really like it, if you were there.”

Since it came out about them being soulbound a few months back, Trixie has seen a surge in popularity. There’s not a great deal of representation for soulbound people in the media. Katya likes the thought that some small, scared kid might see Trixie beaming and talking about Katya, and know that it won’t hurt forever. It doesn’t mean that she’s comfortable being in the spotlight herself.

“People are really enamoured with you,” Trixie goes on. “You know whenever I post a picture with you or tweet about you, the stans go nuts. The AD people think it would really help to boost the video traffic.”

“And what about you?” It isn’t an accusation. It comes out like one, but Trixie will be able to feel that Katya is more afraid than angry.

Trixie, across the room, folds her arms over her chest. She gets like this sometimes, like she thinks she still needs to guard her heart. Katya wants to take her by the shoulders and shake her, tell her that it’s way too late for that. She has a strange flash of standing in her bedroom back in Boston, that very first night they knew each other, watching Trixie draw her extremities in close and tight around herself like a pillbug.

“I would like for you to do it,” she says slowly, carefully. “I would like you to be here, showing off the home we built together, because you’re my wife.”

Katya presses the heel of her palm against her forehead for just a moment. “You know how much I value my privacy, honey. You’re the one who signed up for this life.”

“So did you!” Katya can feel how hard Trixie is working to stay calm and level, and it hurts worse than if she’d just let herself yell. “You married me. You’re in this too. I don’t understand why-”

She gives Trixie space to continue, but she doesn’t say anything more. Just opens her mouth and then closes it again, a couple of times. Katya swallows. “Why what?”

“You did the special. Why can’t you do this for me?”

Katya sinks down heavily to sit on the arm of the couch. All of the lights and the decorations seem suddenly mocking and she closes her eyes. She hates arguing with Trixie. The fear she had the first few months they were together, that every disagreement meant the end of their relationship, has long evaporated. It doesn’t mean that it sucks less, to see Trixie’s lovely face crumple.

“The special was a non-speaking role. All I had to do was sit there and look moon-eyed at you.” Katya opens her eyes to see Trixie across the room, her shoulders curled forwards. “This would be like. . .talking. Letting people literally into our inner sanctum.”

“People want to know you.”

“I don’t want them to!” Trixie is stroking her fingertips back and forth across the fuzzy material of her sweater, very purposefully, and Katya feels calm pouring slowly through her. She tries again, softer. “I want you to know me. Just you. I’m- what we have is sacred to me.”

Trixie breaks, and closes the distance between them until she’s standing between Katya’s knees. She’s got the sleeves of her sweater pulled down over her hands now like a little kid, but her face is smooth and certain.

“I know it is. I just like getting to show you off, I guess. You have no idea what it’s like, to look at you.”

Katya snorts. “I have some idea.”

That’s the strange and wonderful thing about Trixie being her _sestrinskoye serdste_. She does know what it feels like when Trixie sees her finally after coming home from tour, or when Trixie opens her eyes in the morning to Katya’s eager face hovering over hers. She knows exactly how loved she is.

“Well anyway. It makes me feel proud and happy, to be seen with you.”

“I’m not one of your dolls, Trixie. You can’t dress me up all pretty and put me on the shelf. I’m not something you possess.”

Trixie arches an eyebrow. “I don’t think there’s any room in there for me, is there? I think you’ve hit your demon quota.”

It makes both of them laugh, and it feels like casting off an old and ill-fitting skin. Katya feels disoriented, but shiny-pink and new. Trixie is smiling down at her, and Katya reaches up to tug gently on one of her curls.

“Are you upset? Are we fighting?”

“Never,” Trixie says firmly. She lays her palm flat against her own chest. “I can feel your heart flipping the fuck out in here. I’m not gonna ask you to do something that makes you feel like you’re gonna literally die.”

Katya rests her hands at Trixie’s hips and draws her in closer until her knees hit the side of the couch. “It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you. You know that, right? It’s just- it wouldn’t be good for me, honey. It’s not good for me.”

“Okay,” Trixie says easily.

She frames Katya’s face in her palms and leans in to kiss her, lingers there a little longer than Katya is anticipating. She tastes like peppermint and chocolate, and when Katya touches her tongue to the seam of Trixie’s lips she hums and opens to her. She’s got one hand hooked around Katya’s thigh and Katya has to steady herself with her own hand braced against the arm of the couch beside her. Trixie’s her _wife_. Sometimes she wishes she could go back and tell that terrified seven-year-old laying on her back in the grass at the end of August that it will all be okay. That they’ll find their _sestrinskoye serdste_ , and love her beyond their capacity to love.

“You’re the most precious thing in my life,” Trixie tells her, and Katya believes it.

* * *

Katya is awake at five thirty in the morning. It’s Christmas Eve, it’s so dark in their bedroom that Trixie is an ursine lump next to her in their bed, and Katya is _awake_.

Today is her most favourite day of the year.

She likes the big day itself too, of course, but Christmas Eve is about baking and laughter and singing off key at the top of her lungs, or shutting up and listening to Trixie sing instead. It’s about making sure all of the presents she asked Kim to help her wrap are piled up neatly beneath the tree for Trixie to open tomorrow.

This morning, Trixie came by while Katya was getting ready for the day, and put a pair of antlers on her head. She’s been wearing them all day long, and she keeps stopping to look at how cute she is when she catches sight of herself. Every time she goes by Trixie, her wife kisses the tip of her nose _to make it turn pink, Katya_.

Katya’s brother Dmitri, and his wife and baby son, are arriving today to spend Christmas with them. Laura wanted to get away from the cold on the east coast, and Katya is glad to have her family here. It isn’t her first time meeting the baby, she flew out to Hartford right when he was born, but it _is_ Trixie’s first time. She’d been on tour and hadn’t been able to join Katya back in September.

All morning, Katya feels like a little kid. She waits by the window for the rental car to pull into the driveway, and as soon as it does she bellows Trixie’s name across the house. It makes her smile to herself to hear Trixie’s feet pattering along the hallway, and she meets Katya by the door and takes her hand.

Outside, Dmitri is out of the car already and he holds out his arms to them, hugs them both together. Katya closes her eyes and feels something come loose in her chest to have her brother here. Laura is unfastening the baby from the car seat and she straightens up with him in her arms, lets Katya and then Trixie each take a turn embracing her.

Everybody makes their way inside and through to the kitchen, where Trixie has the kettle filled and ready to set on the stovetop. She looks so pretty today, her face bare and her hair tucked back behind her ears. She was wearing a Santa hat earlier and Katya wonders where it’s gotten to, and if she might be persuaded to put it back on.

“Trixie, would you hold the baby? We’ve got some things to get from the car,” Laura says, and hands the baby over.

Trixie takes him, careful to support his diaper-padded butt in one hand. She’s got him upright against her chest, and Katya feels Trixie’s whole body go suddenly warm with awe and tenderness. The baby has immediately grabbed for a fistful of Trixie’s hair and begun trying to stuff it into his mouth, and Katya watches her try very gently to rescue it from their nephew.

She’s smiling down at him, her eyes cartoonishly bright and shiny, and she bounces him a little in her arms. He’s gurgling happily and staring up at Trixie, his gaze fixed on her face. They have a family group chat where Laura and Dima send progress updates of their son, and every time there’s a new message Trixie coos over the pictures and reads out the texts to Katya like she isn’t also part of the group and can read it for herself.

They have his birth announcement still tacked up on the door of the refrigerator. When it came in the mail Katya had wrinkled her nose and said she didn’t see the point of that when they already knew his weight and how long he is in inches from Dmitri’s texts right after he was born. She’d gone to put it in the recycling and Trixie had, aghast, rescued it and cradled the little card against her chest like it was the baby himself.

“Katenka.” Her brother knocks his elbow against Katya’s and she realises she’s been staring at Trixie and the baby instead of helping. It must be all over her face, but Dima is kind enough not to say anything.

She follows her brother and his wife outside to the rental car in the driveway. It’s warm today and Katya’s overheating in her goofy Christmas sweater, but Trixie smiled so big this morning when she saw it that she can’t bear the thought of taking it off. Trixie, of course, can feel for herself how uncomfortably warm and sweaty Katya is and keeps putting glasses of ice water into her hands before she realises she needs them.

“There’s a bag in the trunk, can you grab it?” Dmitri asks her.

Katya pops the trunk, pushes it open and then screams and startles backward. Her baby sister is sitting there cross-legged and beaming. Anya holds out both arms and Katya stumbles to embrace her clumsily, squeezing way too tight.

“What are you _doing_ here? Oh my god.”

“I can’t let you two spend Christmas together without me,” Anya says.

Katya has to let go of her so she can get out of the trunk, but as soon as Anya’s feet are on the ground Katya throws her arms around her again, and their brother captures them both and squeezes tight. Dima and Laura still live out on the east coast, not too far from their parents, and with Anya in Denver it’s been a while since all three of them have been together.

The shock and joy that rushed through her and made her lightheaded must’ve startled Trixie and she comes outside, still bouncing the baby in her arms. She’s turned him around to face outward so he can see what’s going on and he lets out a garbled yell when he sees his mother and grins widely, showing off his gums.

“Trixie!” Anya says, and untangles herself from her siblings to embrace Katya’s wife instead.

The two of them are close, Katya knows. They text almost every day and talk on the phone every few weeks. Anya is way more into the whole celebrity thing than Katya is. She always jokes that Trixie has Anya to buoy her, and Katya to keep her grounded. It’s good for Trixie to be able to drop names and have Anya eager and ready with her hands waiting.

Katya feels giddy with joy at having both of her siblings here. Everybody settles down in the living room — Trixie makes tea — and Katya listens to Anya talk about how the whole plan came together. Their parents aren’t really up for travelling across the country these days, but they’re spending Christmas with Papa’s brother and his family so Anya didn’t feel too bad about not flying out to see them. Katya and Anya and Dima talk loudly over each other, sometimes slipping into Russian on accident. Trixie is next to Laura on the couch, the baby on his back on the play mat Laura’s set out on the floor, and he squirms like a little grub and kicks his legs happily.

Bunny nosed at the baby when he first came in, but she settled down to lay at Dima’s feet and her tail thuds against the floor a few times when he reaches down to scratch behind her ears.

“We watched your special,” Laura tells Trixie, and she flushes deliciously pink. “It was so good. So, so good. And we especially liked all the cameos.”

“Katenka, you looked very, um-” Anya casts her hand around in search of the right word. “ _Neponyatnyy?_ _Da_.”

Katya shrieks and kicks out her foot in the general direction of her baby sister. “Shut _up_. I just wanted to support my wife, you’re not allowed to judge me.” Trixie’s head is tilted in question, and Katya huffs. “Incomprehensible. Weird.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Trixie says, and then squawks out a laugh. “Girl, we had to factor in an extra hour in hair and makeup just to have her look like a human woman.”

It’s not true at all, but it makes Anya laugh loudly and Trixie looks so pleased that Katya doesn’t bother trying to defend herself.

After everybody’s caught up and rested from the journey, Laura and Anya and Trixie head for the kitchen to start preparing dinner. The baby had been fussing some, so Dima is holding him now and bouncing him on his knee. Katya still isn’t used to this, finds it strange seeing her big brother be a _dad_. It suits him, but it’s peculiar all the same.

“How are they really?” she asks, and listens to Dmitri’s run down of how their parents are handling their old age.

He lives close enough that he’s the one who’s there to actually handle things, but Katya doesn’t want him to carry the burden alone. They have an unspoken agreement to keep most of it from Anya; even though she’s in her late thirties, she’s still their baby sister. Katya can offer support emotionally and financially, and Trixie has made it very clear that she wants to help Katya’s family however they can.

Trixie must feel how sad it makes Katya to hear that her parents really have gotten _old_. She emerges from the kitchen and doesn’t say anything, just comes to stand beside Katya’s chair. Katya rests her head against Trixie’s stomach and her gentle fingers come to Katya’s hair and start sifting slowly through it. Dima tells them about how the baby seems to have given Katya’s parents a new lease of life. Papa has grown curmudgeonly in his old age, but he has two soft spots. First Trixie, and now the baby too, seem to be able to get at the soft underbelly of him and make him smile. Whenever Katya and Trixie make it out to the east coast, she catches her father and her wife with their heads bent together conspiratorially, talking in low voices.

Dmitri disappears to the guest room to change the baby’s diaper, and Trixie slides over the arm of the chair and right into Katya’s lap. “Are you okay?”

“Relatively,” Katya says, and Trixie rolls her eyes at the weak joke. “No, I am. I worry about them, you know?”

Katya is careful, when it comes to talking about her family with Trixie. However hard it is to be three thousand miles away from her parents, at least she has them in her life. At least she can call or text whenever she wants, whenever she’s missing them. Her parents both adore Trixie, but it’s not the same.

“I know you do. Do you want maybe we should go out and visit in the new year?”

Katya frowns and shakes her head. “Gross, no. I don’t want to go back to Boston until the spring. I’m not about to freeze my ass off if I can help it.”

“Oh thank god,” Trixie says, and sags down into Katya’s arms a little more. “I mean, not- I love your family. I just don’t think I even own a proper coat anymore.”

They talk a little more, make a tentative plan for Katya to come with Trixie on the east coast leg of her tour next year and visit her parents then. For a little while, Katya lets herself doze with Trixie’s warm weight in her arms, listening to Anya and Laura talking and laughing together while they cook. The house feels full in the best way, warm and vibrant with love.

When dinner gets close to done, Anya comes in to the living room with her hands on her hips to dole out their instructions. Trixie is the youngest, so she’s the one sent outside to watch for the first star to appear. Katya goes with her, partly because Trixie had looked so wide-eyed and startled when Anya had been explaining their ritual, but mostly because she’s glad to have a little quiet time with her wife in the midst of all the craziness. The dog is out with them as well because she whined and scratched at the french door until someone let her into the backyard. She’s pottering aimlessly, and for a little while they just watch her, their fingers threaded together loosely.

“I’m happy that your family’s here,” Trixie says very quietly. The sun dipped into the belly of the earth a while ago, and it’s starting to get dark enough that Katya can’t really see Trixie’s face all too clearly. “I really love them. And I know it makes you happy to have them close.”

“You’re sad,” Katya says. It isn’t an accusation: it’s just the truth. They both can feel it.

Trixie sighs and leans in closer until she can rest her head against Katya’s shoulder. Her thumb is making tiny, distracting circles over the back of Katya’s hand. She switched up her shampoo last week and it still takes Katya by surprise each time. She buries her nose against the crown of Trixie’s head and breathes deeply, gives her the space to speak if she wants to, and to just be sad if she doesn’t.

“It’s tough. Not having them be a part of my life.”

She means her own family, Katya knows. Trixie got a Christmas card in the mail with a picture of her mom and stepdad and two little sisters on it. Inside was a round-robin letter, detailing how the year has been for her family. Like she’s a distant relative, like she’s a cousin several times removed in another country. It’s the best thing for her, the healthy thing. They both know her stepdad has no idea Trixie gets these cards every year, that she saves the letters in a box at the bottom of the closet. Sometimes Katya will feel an ache in the centre of her chest and find her sitting in there, among all her pretty dresses, reading over and over about the childhoods she’s missing out on.

“I know, sweetheart.” Katya does try not to baby her, really she does, but most of the time Trixie sort of likes it. And being with her, loving her, makes Katya feel so tender and gentle that she can’t help herself.

They’ve talked about this enough that there isn’t anything more to be said. Instead, Katya lets her lips form something close to a kiss against the crown of Trixie’s head and she holds her hand, keeps holding it. When they see the first star Trixie straightens upright again and lifts both eyebrows in question.

Katya whistles for the dog and all three of them head back inside. The other three have made dinner, as a thank you for Katya and Trixie hosting them over Christmas. It certainly isn’t going to be twelve courses, and it’s also not January 6th, but there are some traditions that just stick, even when all of the rich history behind them has fallen away.

“Go first, Katenka,” Anya says and shoulders Katya, hard, over towards the kitchen table. The biggest bowl they have is set out, half full of cold water with a towel folded up beneath it for splashes. Katya sits down and closes her eyes, says “ _bud’ zdorov, kak eta voda_.”

 _Be as healthy as this water is_ , she hears Anya translate for Laura and Trixie, right before she submerges her face in the bowl. The shock of the cold almost makes her let out a startled breath but she keeps her eyes closed and counts out in her head, five seconds, before she straightens again. She washes her hands next, and then pushes her checked pants up to her knees and gathers some of the water in the cup of her palms, does her best to wash her calves.

Trixie goes next, and it must look like enthusiasm to all the others but Katya can feel her revulsion, something green and bilious turning over in the pit of her stomach, and she knows that Trixie just can’t bear to have her face in the same water as anybody else but Katya. Once all of the adults have finished up, Katya goes out to the backyard again to tip the remaining water out over the plants and Trixie follows her, two fingers tucked into the back pocket of Katya’s pants.

“Is this like, a real thing, or am I being pranked right now? You married me, you have to tell me the truth.”

She sounds like she’s in a snit, but when Katya turns around to look at her she’s smiling. The empty bowl is between them, against their stomachs, and Trixie traces one finger around and around the rim of it, chasing the last droplets.

“Oh but lying is so _fun_ ,” Katya says, letting her voice come out all whiny, letting her bottom lip come out too into a little pout. “Yeah, it’s a real thing. Be glad we didn’t make you wash in a river or a lake. Papa did that to us one year.”

“Didn’t all the water just immediately start boiling and evaporate right when you got in?” Trixie says sweetly, and then darts out of the way before Katya can swat at her. There’s not a lot she can do anyway, not without breaking their Big Bowl, so she trots happily inside behind Trixie.

It still feels strange for both of them, after living in tiny apartments for so long, to have a table in the kitchen and also a separate, formal dining room. They use it sometimes for parties, but most of the action it sees is when Trixie is tour planning and Bob and the rest of the team come over to spread notes and moodboards and laptops out all over it for days at a time.

Tonight, Laura has set it with all of the fancy tableware Trixie got when they first moved in to the house. The baby is still down for his nap, in the travel crib in the guest room, but it’s right across the hall so they’ll hear if he wakes up. It’s early to eat dinner, not even six yet, but everybody fills their plates. Katya has Trixie right next to her, Dmitri and Laura opposite and Anya at the head of the table, regal and demanding as ever.

There’s an extra place setting on Trixie’s other side, another tradition. They were raised believing that the spirits of their departed family members visit during this meal, and it’s polite to leave an empty spot at the table for them. When they were very young, Dima and Katya used to vie against one another to see who could freak Anya out the worst with their ghost stories.

The three of them can be loud, and they have decades of in-jokes that they bat effortlessly back and forth across the table. Trixie and Laura have both been a part of the family long enough now that they’re comfortable joining in, and Katya is so proud whenever Trixie makes everybody laugh.

When everybody’s done eating, Katya leans in close and puts her mouth against Trixie’s ear to speak very softly to her. “Hey, sweetheart.”

Laura has gotten up to check on the baby, and Anya and Dima are having a heated disagreement about a childhood memory. The whole room is flickering warm yellow-orange in the candlelight, the light over the table still switched off. It makes everything feel more intimate, more reverent. Trixie turns her head and the dimple in her left cheek gets deeper when she smiles.

“Hi, hello,” she says back. She’s making fun, very gently, has made her voice raspier the way she always does when she’s mimicking Katya. “You’ve eaten your fill for the winter months?”

“Mhmm,” Katya says happily. She’s so content this evening that it’s making her want to squirm around in her seat. Before she gets the chance, Trixie’s warm, wide palm lands at her thigh to keep her in place. “If you can just hang me upside down in the closet until the spring?”

Trixie wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know if we can spare the room in there. You can go in the garage.”

“Only if you promise to come visit me every morning and give me a small kiss to start my day, baby.”

Before Trixie can answer, Anya’s foot connects hard with Katya’s shin beneath the table. She yelps and takes her eyes off of her wife to look at her sister instead, just in time to catch her exaggerated eye roll. “Stop being gross. You don’t have to flaunt your _sestrinskoye serdste_ anymore, Katenka. She married you, we get it.”

“ _Prekrati eto_ , Anya. Leave them alone,” Dima admonishes.

Katya makes a show of leaning in and kissing Trixie. She moans loudly into it and lets her hand rest against the column of Trixie’s neck, thumb against her jaw. Trixie is enthusiastic and responsive as always, but Katya feels the laugh building in Trixie’s stomach and breaks away before she can honk it into her mouth.

After all the dinner things are cleared away everybody reconvenes in the kitchen. Another tradition from their childhood is to bake cookies on Christmas Eve night so that Santa would get to have them while they’re still fresh and warm. Katya has been excited about it all day, and she’s looked out all of the ingredients and equipment that they need while everybody else cleared up after dinner. Anya excuses herself to shower, but everybody else is in the kitchen. One of Trixie’s Christmas playlists is drifting smoothly out of the speaker with the volume down low. She seems to have hundreds of them, one for every possible festive circumstance, and Katya wouldn’t be shocked at all to learn that this one is called _Christmas Cookie Baking Playlist_ or something equally specific.

“Katenka, _eto ne pravil’no_!” Dmitri scolds. _That’s not right_.

He takes the jar of flour right out of her hands before she can add any of it to the mixing bowl. Trixie keeps their pantry organised carefully, everything in a reusable container labelled with a little chalkboard sticker. They’re hand-written, and Trixie had Katya do it because she said her handwriting is neater. Once every couple weeks, the two of them go to the zero waste store and refill their containers of pasta and sugar and flour. Katya cares about the environment of course, but she cares more about how cute Trixie is wielding the little scoops at the store and making sure everything is precisely weighed out.

Katya has gotten much, much better at cooking since they’ve been married. Everybody always told her that experience would eventually outweigh any natural inability, but it’s more than that. Whenever she comes back from travelling, Trixie is so tired of the food on the road and she whines and lays her cheek between Katya’s shoulder blades, asks her to please _cook something nourishing_. It’s been a lot of trial and error, a lot of charred remains welded to the bottom of their best saucepan, but Katya now actually has several real, honest-to-God _meals_ in her repertoire.

They learned pretty quickly that she’s never going to be able to surprise Trixie with dinner. One time, Katya had been nibbling at the ingredients and Trixie had called out to her from the office and asked her to please stop eating tomatoes while she was trying to work. It’s not always, not everything, but if Katya is thinking very hard about what she’s eating or it’s a particularly strong flavour, Trixie tastes it too. It’s also true the other way around, of course, and since Trixie has a much more adventurous palate she takes great joy in eating disgusting things just to watch Katya whine and grump about it.

Baking isn’t necessarily her strong point, but she isn’t about to be railroaded by her big brother. Katya yells right back at him, the two of them squabbling in rapidfire Russian, and she sees Trixie exchange a look with Laura.

Her wife is sitting on top of the dining table with her feet on one of the chairs. She’s got the baby in her lap, his chunky legs either side of one of her thighs and her hand at his round little belly to keep him secure. Laura is sitting at the table the regular way, the straight-person way, and she and Trixie are chatting quietly together while they watch Katya and Dima making cookies.

Katya keeps stealing chocolate chips out of the glass jar they keep them in and Dmitri swats her hands away, but never quite fast enough. She leaves him at the counter for a moment to come over to Trixie and she feeds her a couple of the dark chocolate chips because she likes those ones the best. Trixie’s eyes drift closed and she hums softly when the pads of Katya’s fingers touch her lips. The very tip of her tongue darts out, and Katya lets herself stay right where she is for a moment. She can feel how full up with peace and joy Trixie is this evening, the warm weight of their nephew in her arms and the windows of the kitchen getting fogged up with laughter and cooking.

Once they’ve gotten the first batch of cookies in the oven to cook, Katya settles on the floor in front of it to watch them bake. She always used to do this as a little girl, liked to see how the balls of cookie dough flattened and spread as they cooked. It feels maybe goofy to do now that she’s forty years old, and she already knows some ungodly noise is certainly going to escape her when she gets back up, but something about having her big brother and her baby sister both under her same roof is making her feel childlike and full of wonder.

“Babe, scoot back a bit? You’re making my face hot.”

When she turns over her shoulder to look at Trixie the tip of her nose and her cheeks are a little bit pink, and Katya scooches back a few inches away from the oven. At the sink, her brother starts singing while he washes the mixing bowl and all the other utensils they’ve dirtied. It’s a carol from their childhood, one they used to sing every Christmas Eve at church, and Katya joins in immediately.

All the words come to her without her having to think about it at all, drifting right up from her belly to the roof of her mouth. It feels good to sing, and she tips her head back and grins widely. The baby is laughing wildly, squirming in Trixie’s grip so she has to put her other arm around him, and it’s making everybody else giggle too. Trixie didn’t grow up in the church, and even though she loves Christmas and _especially_ Christmas music, she doesn’t know this one. Katya feels how tender Trixie is for her today and it’s making her so happy that she can’t even bear to look at Trixie for more than a couple of seconds, afraid she’ll do something deeply gay and embarrassing like start crying because she’s so in love with her wife.

They get to the chorus of the song, and across the house Anya’s voice rings out to join in with Dima and Katya. Footsteps pound down the hallway and then she comes skidding into the kitchen in her socks, her hair wet from the shower and falling into her face.

“And all the angels sang for him!” Anya belts out at the top of her lungs, not any more tuneful than Katya herself is, but more than making up for it with her enthusiasm. “The bells of heaven rang for him!”

Katya is laughing so hard that she can’t keep singing, the words coming out all garbled, and Dmitri has dropped the dish sponge into the sink and made soap bubbles splatter all over himself and the floor. Anya is so sincere, yelling out the second verse mostly by herself

The baby is beginning to fuss, all of the noise and emotion of five adult voices too much for him. Trixie hands him easily over to his mother and comes to stand behind Katya. She lets her weight sag against her wife’s shins, her head fitting neatly in the little hollowed out space just above Trixie’s knees. An absent-minded hand drifts through Katya’s hair, working out some of the tangles and knots while Trixie interrogates Anya about the song and why all three of them know every word of it.

Bunny has been wonderful with the baby, and she pads over to Laura and noses inquisitively at him. He makes a loud, shrieking noise of delight when he sees the dog and almost lunges out of his mother’s arms. Bunny sits down neatly when Trixie tells her, and her long tail thumps loudly against the kitchen floor. Laura helps the baby to pat the dog’s head, and keeps his little hands carefully out of the way of Bunny’s tongue.

“You like the puppy, _rybeshka_?” Katya says.

It makes Anya snort from where she’s sitting on the countertop, the wet ends of her hair making a dark stain on her shirt. “Little fish? Really? Are we doing that? Dima, are we doing that?”

“Katenka is.” Their brother shrugs, and doesn’t turn away from the sink to look at them.

All the excitement of the day and the warmth in the kitchen is making Katya feel suddenly sleepy. She closes her eyes and listens to Trixie talking right over her head, anaesthetised by the delicate work of Trixie’s fingers in her hair. Anya is giving Trixie a setlist of all the songs they’ve been singing together since childhood and Dima is loudly interjecting with corrections and additions.

“You guys like, go all the way in on the religious Christmas music, huh?” Trixie says. She’s tugging on Katya’s hair right at her scalp and Katya knows, she _knows_ , that Trixie can feel how she has to press her thighs together and bite her lip. Amusement is fluttering, delicate and volucrine in Trixie’s chest.

If it were just them here, Katya would turn her head and open her mouth against the inside of Trixie’s thigh, let her teeth scrape where her skin is the most sensitive. She can’t do that, but just thinking about it has almost the same effect. Trixie clears her throat and lets go of Katya’s hair, lays her hand flat against her head instead.

Anya is oblivious to what just happened right in front of her. “I do play your Christmas album all the time,” she admits.

It makes Trixie scream, delighted, which makes the baby startle violently and then start wailing as well. Trixie takes her hands away from Katya, guilt beginning to churn in the pit of her stomach. Katya cranes her head backwards to see her but Trixie is already gone, both hands outstretched helplessly towards the baby.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry. Katya keeps threatening to send me away to an inpatient program to get my laugh rehabilitated, I’m so sorry.” Her hands hang uselessly in the air as Laura rocks the baby and shushes him, tries to get him to settle. His round, red little face is all scrunched up with distress, and Trixie looks about five seconds from crying herself.

The timer starts going as well, which doesn’t help at all. Everybody else is occupied, Anya having slid quietly out of the room as soon as the baby started crying, so Katya gets the cookies out of the oven herself. When she shakes the tray there’s the tiniest wobble, which Dima said means they’ll be nice and gooey in the centre, so she sets the baking sheet down on the stovetop for everything to cool.

She can feel how distressed Trixie is, how bad she feels for upsetting their nephew, and she slides her hand smoothly into Trixie’s and squeezes tight. It’s fine, it happens; when he was a newborn, the baby used to scream and scream whenever Katya held him, apparently able to sense how freaked out she is by babies in general.

“Oh wow, honey. You made him cry and he hasn’t even seen you with makeup on yet.” She’s hoping to get a laugh, but instead Trixie curses and reaches for Katya’s wrist, turns it over so she can check the time.

Katya briefly considered getting Trixie a watch for Christmas, since she doesn’t wear one, but she likes how Trixie does this. The pads of her fingertips drag at the soft skin inside of Katya’s wrist, right over her pulse, and they linger there way longer than is necessary.

“I’m going live on Instagram in an hour, I need to go put a face on. I’m so sorry,” she says to Laura, again, and then she disappears off in the direction of their room.

The baby has calmed again, over the initial shock, and Laura hands him over to Katya, saying something about wanting to help Dima clean up the kitchen. Katya takes him without really thinking about it, and then immediately panics. She knows that he can sense it if she freaks out, so she takes a few deep and steadying breaths and wanders through to the living room to sit herself down on the couch with him.

“Hello, _rybeshka_ ,” Katya murmurs. The baby is much less gross-looking than the first time she’d met him, when he was freshly earth side. He’s beginning to look like a person, now. He’s looking at her, his eyes enormous, and Katya finds herself looking right back.

She wonders if he might have a _sestrinskoye serdste_ , too. Even now, she’s not sure if she’d wish that on him or not. A late night host had asked Trixie about it a few months back, right when it had first come out that she and Katya are soulbound. It’d been a huge deal, which neither of them knew to expect, but it’d been the main talking point in every interview she’d done for weeks and weeks.

Trixie had said that it’s worth it, worth the years of feeling empty and trying to navigate around another person. That you learn to love them before you ever know them, and then when you finally do meet you get to hold out your hands to them and receive the final piece of yourself. Katya had sat on the middle of the couch at three in the morning, her wife across the country on tour, and wound that part of the interview back to watch over again four or five times.

The baby is gurgling contentedly in her lap, one of his little hands wrapped around her finger, and Katya leans in close to talk to him. “If you’re soulbound, you don’t have to carry it alone. I’ll hold your hand.”

It’s sort of nice, having the warm weight of him in her arms. She finds she’s more comfortable with the baby when no one else is here to watch her interact with him. She doesn’t feel like she’s doing something wrong, like just her mere presence is going to be enough to psychologically scar him.

While Trixie is doing her Instagram Live, which Anya is guest starring in, Katya and Laura and Dima sit watching the television turned down so low it’s almost muted. They can hear Trixie through the wall, and Anya chiming in sometimes as well. This was her publicist’s idea, and Trixie is going to sing for a half hour or so with Anya accompanying her.

Katya doesn’t usually watch her when she goes live. She teases that it’s because she gets to see more than enough of Trixie’s life in real time and doesn’t need to have to find her glasses and look at her on a tiny screen. Really though, she doesn’t like to see all of the comments popping up underneath. She is so proud of Trixie that every time she thinks about it her heart closes like a fist. It doesn’t mean she needs to expose herself to all of the weird stuff her fans say to her, all of their demands that she show Katya in the video too.

The baby had been asleep against Katya’s chest by the time her brother and sister-in-law came to join her from the kitchen, and no one had wanted to risk moving him so he’s still there. Katya has made herself as comfortable as she can on the couch, but she still feels like she’s on high alert. Part of that is Trixie on the other side of the wall, focusing hard on not messing up her mini show, but Katya’s also nervous to do something wrong and wake her nephew.

Bunny is aching with jealousy, and even though Dima is sitting on the floor with her and petting her, she keeps casting baleful looks at Katya over his shoulder and every so often she lets out a small whine. The baby’s chunky little legs are curled up and he smacks his lips in his sleep and makes little snuffling noises. Katya’s shirt is clinging to her skin with sweat because the baby is so warm but she’s afraid to try and shift him even the tiniest bit.

Through the wall, Katya hears Trixie signing off and then the two of them emerge. Anya is flushed with pride and pleasure and she keeps looking up at Trixie like a little girl, her face round with awe. She’s four years older than Trixie is, but she admires her so much and it makes Katya so happy. Trixie’s looking at her phone still, so she doesn’t see Katya right away. When she does, when she looks up and sees her with the baby curled up fast asleep on her chest, Trixie stops right where she’s standing and her mouth opens. After a lifetime of practice, Katya has gotten pretty good at deciphering Trixie’s feelings, but tonight it’s difficult. Everything is swirling in the pit of her stomach, joy and tenderness, but also something maybe a little sad.

Trixie doesn’t say anything, just comes to sit next to Katya on the couch. All of the lights are off in the room apart from the tree, and the right side of Trixie’s face is bathed in soft white light, the left side severe with shadow. Anya is chattering about how fun it was to go live, to no one in particular, and Dima is occasionally interjecting a murmured acknowledgement, but everyone else is quiet and calm.

The baby is still sleeping soundly on Katya’s chest, and Trixie lets her head rest at Katya’s shoulder so that she’s almost nose to nose with their nephew. For a little while Katya, half-awake, lets her thoughts get all melty and malleable, lets them unspool away from her. She imagines this life, thinks about a baby with Trixie’s enormous dark eyes. About waking in the middle of the night and fumbling disoriented in the darkness to collect their crying child from the bassinet and bring them to Trixie to be fed.

Trixie, propped up against the headboard with the strap of her shirt falling down onto her shoulder and her tits spilling out, swollen and heavy and rivered with blue-green veins. Her hair unwashed and her face bare, exhausted and still gorgeous.

It isn’t them. It’s just not. Every time Katya tries to hold on to an image it shifts and blurs into something else. She loves their nephew desperately — it feels like she’s holding her own heart warm and snuffling on her chest — but she also can’t imagine this actually being their life.

She’s quiet while everybody says goodnight, stands with her cheek against the glass of the french door while she waits for Bunny to get done using the bathroom. She can hear Trixie wishing everyone sweet dreams and she feels a bright flare of joy when her wife kisses the baby’s wrinkled little forehead. It feels like her brain is five feet outside of her body, like she’s tugging it along on a string like a child’s toy and she keeps crashing it into things.

In their bathroom, Katya washes her face and then studies herself in the mirror over the sink for a long time. She looks tired, but not unhappy. Trixie knows exactly how she’s feeling, of course, and she’s given her some space to try to move through it. It isn’t working. She needs to have her hand held.

The bathroom door opens and then closes again, and in the mirror Katya sees her wife hovering like she’s not sure if it’s okay to come close. She’s done her own skincare routine already and her face is smooth and shiny with all the serums.

“Hi, baby,” Katya says softly. _Come here_.

Trixie steps up to the cabinet and hoists herself up to sit on the countertop, only narrowly managing not to topple right into the sink thanks to Katya’s quick, sure hands. She gets settled, and Katya shifts forwards until she’s between Trixie’s thighs. It’s her favourite place in the world to be, warm and slick and honeyed. She lifts her chin in invitation and Trixie meets her there, leans down to kiss her very carefully. It’s like this sometimes. Katya likes when Trixie comes in the front door and brats until Katya pins her against the nearest surface, but she likes this too. Trixie, taking her time. Wanting it to be soft and good and considered.

“Are you okay?” Trixie asks her when they separate.

She nods rapidly a few times and manages a small smile. There’s a wedge of emotion in her throat that she has to try a couple of times to swallow down. “Yeah, just- I felt it, Trixie.”

“I’m gonna need you to be a little bit more specific.”

“I felt how happy it made you. Holding the baby, when he was smiling at you.”

“Okay?” Trixie says slowly. She’s still sitting on the countertop, still looking down at Katya with her arms draped over her shoulders. “That’s- okay. Yeah. Did you also feel how happy it made me when I got to give him back?”

Katya laughs, and it comes out all wet and embarrassing. One single, stupid, hot tear escapes and slides right down the side of her face until Trixie gathers it with her thumb. “It did?”

“Katya, listen to me,” Trixie says firmly. “I love our nephew. He’s cute, and cuddly, and he also requires absolutely zero responsibility from us.”

“I just- you’d be such a great mom, Trix.”

Trixie takes that, absorbs it, and Katya feels it settle into the pit of her stomach like a warm meal, making her full and contented. “Yeah, probably. So would you. In a different life, sure. But not this one.”

“We could make it work, if you wanted.”

“How?” Trixie shakes her head. “I go off on tour and leave you here alone with Bunny and our baby, and I feel every time you’re sad or scared or lonely? No. That’s not good for us, baby. No.”

Katya can feel how certain Trixie is. She’s always this way, always so sure of herself, and it does help Katya to be sure as well. “This doesn’t have to be like, final. We can discuss again in a few years.”

“We can, but I don’t think my answer’s gonna change. I like our life. I love the kids we know and I’m really excited to be the cool, rich lesbian aunts who show up and spoil their nieces and nephews silly. And I’m completely happy and fulfilled not having any kids of our own.”

“Okay.” Katya lifts her chin to take another kiss from Trixie. “Okay. I love you.”

“I love _you_ , toe to tip.”

“Tip of what?” Katya says, and tilts her head. “I’m not wearing the strap right now, honey.”

That makes Trixie scream a laugh, and then she immediately slaps her hand over her own mouth. It’s fine, their room doesn’t adjoin either the guest room or the office, where Anya is sleeping on the pullout. Still, they both like the thrill of having to be quiet, from time to time.

Trixie hops down from the countertop and threads her fingers through Katya’s, brings her out with her into the bedroom and right into their bed. Katya feels soft and gentle and romantic this evening, and she doesn’t want to actually gag Trixie. Instead she gives her two fingers to suck on while she works at her with her free hand, and Trixie helps, their knuckles bumping together. When she comes she bites down, and Katya is sure she’s going to have two tiny purple bruises tomorrow from Trixie’s front teeth.

Trixie opens her mouth over her and Katya bites her lip, so hard that it makes Trixie say _ouch_ and lift her head, look at Katya with a cute little pout. Katya whispers an apology and rolls over onto her stomach to hide her face against the pillow while Trixie fucks her. She doesn’t even move after, stays right there sacked out on her stomach with her underwear off and is out cold before she even feels Trixie get back into bed next to her.

Most days, when Katya wakes in the morning, she turns to Trixie before she looks to see whether the sun is up. Today it’s still dark outside, and Trixie’s eyes are open. She sees that Katya’s awake and she grins and leans in to kiss her, both of her cheeks and the tip of her nose and then her mouth, very gently.

“Good morning,” she says softly. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, beautiful.” Katya hooks her arm around Trixie’s neck and draws her in to kiss her again, keeps it sweet and a little silly. She can feel how excited Trixie is and she lets her lift herself off of Katya’s chest and follows her out of their bed.

For her birthday, Katya got Trixie a robe. It’s nude silk, finished with a red contrast trim in intricate floral lace, and it almost brushes the floor. Trixie ties it at her waist and she looks plump and glowing and beautiful, like an illustration Katya would have carefully cut out of a magazine centrefold and hidden in a box beneath the bed with her other most precious things. Katya pulls on sweats and a t-shirt, an old merch one from Trixie’s tour, and follows her wife out into the living room.

Dima and Laura are already up with the baby and the tree lights are turned on, casting a warm white glow around the room. Trixie settles herself on the couch and Katya sinks to the floor at her feet, leans back against her shins. From the kitchen, Anya appears with coffee for everyone. It’s nice to have a slow, easy morning. In a couple years, when the baby is big enough to understand about Santa, Christmas will be all about preserving that magic for him. For now, Katya gets to sit and take her time with her coffee while Trixie strokes her fingers through her hair over and over.

As kids they always went to church on Christmas morning, and if they were back home at her parents’ house they’d still be going. Katya doesn’t dislike it, the pageantry and the reverence both together, but it’s nice not to have to hurry to get dressed. Another of Trixie’s playlists is on quietly in the background while everybody opens their gifts. It’s tricky every year to keep her excitement to a minimum so she doesn’t clue Trixie in to the exact moment she’s picked out her gifts and Trixie can’t ambush her and try to spoil the surprise for herself. It’s worth it to see her face this morning when she opens the gifts Katya puts into her waiting hands.

After everything is unwrapped and the paper is cleared away, Trixie goes to take a shower while everybody else gets started on breakfast. It’s funny trying to reconcile Katya and Trixie’s Christmas traditions with Dima and Laura’s, and with the ones from their childhood. As kids they were usually way too excited about playing with their gifts to eat real breakfast, and they would subsist on the candy from their stockings until lunch. Dima and Laura usually make pancakes, apparently. Anya takes the baby and dances him around the living room so that he giggles loudly and lays his small round cheek against her chest. Katya stays in the kitchen, pretending to supervise, but she’s really just hoping she can sneak the leftover chocolate chips.

It happens very suddenly, in the middle of a conversation with Laura about Dmitri’s peculiar habit of only wearing one sock. Katya feels wetness, hot and slick between her thighs, and her knees give out and _thunk_ against the cabinet. She’s so suddenly, desperately turned on that it’s like she can feel her pupils dilate.

 _Trixie_.

She excuses herself, mutters something about getting dressed, and tries not to jog down the hallway towards their bathroom. The door is closed, but it isn’t locked, and Katya opens it and slips inside. Trixie is standing beneath the stream of the water, her hair soaked and sticking to her cheeks. She’s got one hand between her own legs, and when she sees Katya she sinks two fingers into herself and bites out a groan.

Katya feels clumsy and disoriented, can’t seem to get out of her clothes quickly enough. She leaves everything dumped on the floor and opens the door to the shower stall. The rush of cold air inside makes Trixie’s stomach and thighs erupt with gooseflesh and she whines in the back of her throat.

“You,” Katya says, and points a finger at her. “Are a nefarious fucking criminal. You villain. You depraved slut.”

Trixie steps forward out of the spray of the shower head and takes Katya’s finger into her mouth, bites down hard even though Katya _knows_ it hurts her to do it. With her other hand she circles Katya’s wrist in her fingers and makes like she’s going to drag her under the water, but Katya shakes her head and breaks out of Trixie’s grip.

“No, baby. I’m not gonna get my hair wet for you.” She takes her finger out of Trixie’s mouth and lets herself look at the red indentations from her teeth, above the purple ones from last night, for just a moment before she focuses again. “You think that’s funny? You think you’re real cute, knowing I’m out there with my brother?”

Trixie’s eyes are wide and huge and she nods a few times, rapidly. Sometimes she just doesn’t like to talk, and that’s okay. It’s good, because there’s a lot Katya wants to say to her and it’s just about the only time she won’t get interrupted.

“On your knees,” Katya says, and Trixie drops down hard so that her knees crack against the tile. She has to fight the urge not to hook her leg over Trixie’s shoulder immediately. Instead, she touches her thumb to the underside of Trixie’s chin right where it starts to become her throat and presses down until Trixie lifts her head. She swallows, and Katya feels the work of it both beneath her thumb and in her own throat. “There. Let me look at you. That’s what you wanted, hm? Me to come in here and look at you.”

The spray of the shower is hitting the small of Trixie’s back and she wiggles her hips, the pressure not where she wants it and not nearly enough. Katya can feel the noises of discontent building inside of Trixie but she doesn’t let them out.

“Good girl, stay still. You’re so beautiful, sweetheart. And I know you know that. Do you know how sexy that is?”

Trixie’s eyes are still meeting Katya’s and she nods again, parts her lips but doesn’t make any noise. Katya braces herself with one hand against the tile and slides the opposite leg over Trixie’s shoulder, pressing down with the heel of her foot. Trixie is eager and desperate and she turns her head immediately to kiss the inside of Katya’s thigh, open-mouth and with tongue like they’re making out. Her teeth scrape, and Katya’s hips buck sharply.

“We don’t have all day, Trixie,” she says as sternly as she can manage. “Come on.”

The first touch of Trixie’s mouth, every time, makes Katya’s stomach lurch like she’s missed a step going down the stairs. She’s so wet and swollen that she almost can’t bear it, Trixie’s insistent tongue and the hot wash of her breath. Trixie’s face is flushed, from the heat of the bathroom or from the sound of Katya’s voice. Katya is so uselessly, desperately wet that she barely even feels it when Trixie pushes a finger into her, and she immediately demands that Trixie add another.

“God, fuck, _Trixie_ ,” she grits out when Trixie scissors her fingers. Trixie’s got her free hand between her own legs again, and on another day Katya would tell her not to touch herself, that she has to wait, but fuck, it’s _Christmas_. And it helps.

Katya’s entire body is rocking against Trixie’s face and it should be embarrassing, how quickly she’s going to come, but Trixie did this. Trixie knew exactly what she was doing, standing here touching herself and waiting for Katya to come get her. Trixie crooks her fingers and finds the soft, textured place inside of Katya that makes her grit her teeth. Her mouth is everywhere, and Katya can feel her smiling, can feel how much Trixie likes this.

When Katya comes she lets out a little yell that reverberates around the bathroom, but she doesn’t think her family will have heard it all the way on the other side of the house. Trixie’s firm hands, one at her thigh and the other gripping her ass, help keep her on her feet. As soon as she’s sure Katya isn’t going to crumple onto the tile, Trixie stands up and crowds her back against the wall. Her mouth opens and she looks at Katya in question.

“You can talk now, baby.”

“Kiss me,” Trixie says immediately, and leans in before Katya can respond. She’s got her own fingers between her legs again, and the back of her hand bumps Katya’s hip as she rubs at herself furiously.

They kiss and kiss, until Trixie breaks apart from Katya and hides her face against her neck instead, keening as she comes. Katya feels it like an aftershock and clutches her wife, smoothes the flat of her palm up and down the length of Trixie’s spine as if to soothe her.

Katya leaves Trixie in the shower to finish washing her hair and, once she’s dressed, she waits for her in their bedroom. She sits at the vanity and takes her time putting on a face so that it doesn’t seem like she just stops existing when Trixie’s not in the room. By the time Trixie comes out she’s put everything on except her lipstick, because she’s hoping that she’ll get to make out with her a little more.

Trixie’s got her hair combed out across her shoulders and down her back, and it smells like her leave in conditioner. She comes around behind Katya and drapes her arms over Katya’s shoulders, kisses the edge of her cheek.

“You look pretty,” she says, and Katya grins widely.

“I am imbued with the Christmas spirit.”

Trixie meets Katya’s eyes in the mirror and arches one eyebrow. “As long as that’s the only spirit you’re imbued with today.”

“Shut _up_!” Katya screams and shakes her fists around until Trixie captures them. She sits down on the little bench seat, nudging her way on so that Katya has to scoot over. “You’re so mean, I can’t believe I married you.”

“Wanna get divorced so we can do it again?” Trixie offers, and Katya kisses the smug little grin right off her face.

In a little while, they’ll have to go back out to the living room. Today is going to be about watching goofy movies from their childhoods and eating until they feel like they’re going to die. Trixie might take a nap on the couch this afternoon, maybe with the baby dozing on her chest. Katya will get to reminisce with her big brother and her baby sister, and steal kisses from her wife.

Before she knew Trixie, she had so many lonely Christmases. She was always thinking about her, always wondering what her _sestrinskoye serdste_ was doing for the holidays and whether they missed her as ferociously as Katya missed them. She’d be quite content today — all days — with just getting to sit next to Trixie and talk to her and hold her hand.

“Hey,” Katya says. “I love you.”

“I love _you_ ,” Trixie says back, and kisses her slow and good. “More every day. Merry Christmas, Katya.”

**Author's Note:**

> when i accidentally fell into this fandom at the start of this year, i had no idea how much of an important part of my life it was going to become. i have met some wonderful people, made some friendships i truly cherish, and i have felt so welcomed. thank you, if you have ever left me a comment or a kudos, a tweet or a message. i'm incredibly grateful to everyone who interacts with me over here on this extraordinarily gay little corner of the internet.
> 
> i hope that you have a really wonderful festive season if you're celebrating, and a peaceful end to the year if you're not. you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/reallybeanie) or [tumblr](https://katiehoughton.tumblr.com/), where i love to yell about our ladies and would love for you to join me. make sure to check out the christmas offerings from JoanneElizabeth, connyhascontrol and stutter as well and show them some love - they are remarkable writers and deserve nothing but kindness.


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